Cancer is now the number one cause of death in North America. Malignant tumors of the central nervous system (CNS) are the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in adolescents and adults between the ages of 15 and 34, and in children, brain tumors are the leading cause of cancer death. Furthermore, the two-year survival rate for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a high-grade glioma (HGG), grade IV, is less than 20% (Davis et al. (1998) J. Neurosurg. 88:1-10), and there has been a steady increase in the incidence of brain cancers during the last 20 years (“Reports from the front” (1995) Science 267:1414). Almost any cancer can metastasize to the CNS (Olson et al. (1974) Arch. Neurol. 30:122-136).
A common approach to the treatment of malignant gliomas involves surgery (Berger (1994) Sem. Oncol. 21:172-185), radiation therapy (Gunderson & Tepper, Eds. (2000) Clinical Radiation Oncology (Churchill-Livingstone, Pa.), pp 314-35), and various chemotherapeutic regimens (Lesser & Grossman (1994) Sem. Oncol. 21:220-235), but neither single nor multimodal treatments are curative. At present, treatment is implemented to improve or sustain neurological function of the patient, to diminish the size of the tumor growing intracranially, and to lengthen intervals between treatments. Thus, new and molecular-specific methods of HGG treatment are urgently needed.